Goodbye, WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon

**Kusha Navadar** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today here on WNYC. My next guest is probably a familiar voice to many of you. It's Jeff Spurgeon, the longtime morning show host on WQXR, New York Public Radio's classical music sister station. We have the honor of speaking to Jeff now because this coming Friday will be his last day on the air.
Yes, Jeff Spurgeon, beloved host, is retiring after 30 years here at QXR and 40 total years on the airwaves in New York. And I feel very lucky that he's here with me right now in the studio to reflect a bit on his time here. Hi, Jeff.

**Jeff Spurgeon** (0:51)
Hey, Kusha. Thanks for having me.

**Kusha Navadar** (0:53)
Absolutely. It's a privilege. Jeff, when WQXR announced this news a few months ago, the comments on the web were they were voluminous and they were passionate. Let me just say listeners are really going to miss you. Do you have any thoughts about, I don't know, how a radio host can become kind of like a parasocial friend and how you approach that in your years?

**Jeff Spurgeon** (1:12)
I think that it happens really just by consistency. So, you know, I feel like to one extent, you know you have that chair at home that you've been sitting in for a long time, and if somebody comes in the room who hasn't been there, they go, what an ugly chair. That chair needs to be, Rick, could you re-upholster the thing, maybe?
But if you know it and you've spent time with it, it's really comfortable. And so having been there for a while, people are used to it and accustomed to it, and that's one piece of it. One piece of it is consistency. And I think the other is the magic of this medium, the medium of audio.
Older people will remember the idea of radio, but younger people, we just should talk about audio. It is a voice. It's somebody with you. And I think it is one of the most magical things in the world. Because when you hear a voice in a context such as ours, it doesn't take long to decide if you like that person or don't like that person. Fifteen seconds of hearing them and you go, it's kind of a jerk, click, and you go somewhere else or you may stay around for a while. But that connection happens without anybody trying. And it activates your imagination without you doing it. It happens automatically. And I think that is one of the most magical things about audio, a voice on the radio, and actually about music itself too, which also engages your imagination and your heart without you doing a thing.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:55)
I love that you took the opportunity to compare yourself to an old chair. I think you can be more generous to yourself than that, although old chairs are also very comfortable.

**Jeff Spurgeon** (3:04)
That's right.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:04)
I want to turn it back to you as well before we go to the classical music. You talk about consistency. You are in a studio. You don't necessarily get to see all the people that you touch. How is that consistency of that parasocial relationship influenced you?

**Jeff Spurgeon** (3:18)
I think the biggest thing that happened to me a number of years ago, actually when WQXR moved from the ownership of the New York Times to New York Public Radio, that was in 2009 And we began also to use the Internet more for listener comments. And previously, I had this sense that I was mostly talking to people who were in their later years. Classical music radio has an older audience.
That's always been true.
And so I heard from people, in those days, it was with postcards. Ask your parents what a postcard is. And then we began to use the Internet. I began to hear from parents who had took their kids to school in the morning in the car. So I had this new sense that we were talking to families and young people in a way that I had not understood the reach of the radio station and the appeal of the music. Again, it's a boutique radio format, classical music. But I still, it was the, wow, we're talking to families and children. So that was a change for me to have that sense.

**Kusha Navadar** (4:24)
Listeners, especially WQXR listeners, classical music fans, Jeff Spurgeon fans, give us a call now if you've always had a question for Jeff, but were never able to have him over for dinner. Here's the number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692.